The Ramayana of Valmiki (1870s)
by Valmiki, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith

Translation 1870–1874.

One of the two epic Hindu poems, the other being the Mahabharata. The Ramayana tells the story of the deeds of Lord Ram who, having devoted himself to fighting demons, defeats in a mighty war Ravan, the demon king of Lanka (present day Sri Lanka), who had kidnapped his wife Sita.

This verse translation by Griffith, whose translations of the Rig Veda and the Sama Veda are also available at sacred-texts, was scanned in 2000 from an original copy, which had very poor typesetting. Due to the difficulty of converting this 600 page text to etext, the project was put on hold for several years until OCR technology matured. Finally in 2003, the text was OCR-ed and proofed at Distributed Proofing. However, despite best efforts, there are several places in this text where the proofing was difficult or impossible. These are indicated by asterisks or (illegible). We are in the process of cleaning up these issues and hope to have a definitive version of this text at some point.

See also: "Rāmāyana," in The New International Encyclopædia, New York: Dodd, Mead and Co. (1905)

Valmiki8672The Ramayana of Valmiki1870sRalph T. H. Griffith

The Ramayana

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Book I[1]

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  1. Called in Sanskrit also Bála-Kánda, and in Hindi Bál-Kánd, i. e. the Book describing Ráma's childhood, bála meaning a boy up to his sixteenth year.

Book II

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Book III

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Book IV

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Book V

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Book VI

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   This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

 

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

 

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse